Preview: Purple :: Features :: Performance :: Time Out Singapore

The play Purple walks the tricky territory between starkly sincere and super-spectacular. The story of ‘Singapore’s most famous transsexual’ Maggie Lai (played by Shane Mardjuki), it features both aerial acrobatics and a devastatingly detailed scene reenacting Maggie’s bloody sex-change operation. See also: Sex and dating tips from Maggie Lai (played by Shane Mardjuki) As if all this weren’t sensational enough, Purple has Maggie’s tale told by three beautiful but bloodthirsty nurses. Maidemoisella, Verinimolisa and Prisercillia – played by Matilda Chua, Elizabeth Loh and Rebecca Spykerman, respectively – are the nurses entrusted with Maggie’s operation. None of the actresses can quite remember their characters’ names during our interview. ‘Please don’t ask me to spell it. Or pronounce it,’ laughs the boisterous Loh, while the charming Spykerman confesses: ‘Good Lord, hold ...